The Association of Catholic Priests The Society of St.Peter and Paul

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I notice Philip Jenkins remarks that present-day Third World Christians feel with particular force the Gospel imagery of the heavenly banquet and Jesus as the food of life precisely BECAUSE they know what hunger is.

In those dioceses it is about filling gaps and getting older men to look after more masses and placing bigger expectations on them. With respect to the claims of the We Are Church movement, we would surely expect to find something in this document through which the Council fathers outlined the renewal of the liturgy, of which they stated: “the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows” (10). Hans Peter Hurka, the leader of the We Are Church movement there, claims his group will conduct liturgical ceremonies in which lay persons act as priests. The Society of Catholic Priests is associated with the Dearmer Society, for ordinands who aspire to full membership of SCP, and the Company of Servers, for lay people who serve at the altar. Their advocacy of an end to celibacy does not stand alone - it is part of a wider desire to do away with any distinction between the priestly and lay states - hence the suggestion to ordain simplex priests who would train on the job rather than attending seminaries and who would not be differentiated from the "community".

Its intervention in the case of Fr Kevin Reynolds, who was libelled in RTÉ's "Prime Time Investigates" programme – Mission to Prey – in May 2011 was instrumental in securing an apology from the broadcaster. I strongly suspect from this and some similar posts that what they mean by "a theology of priesthood for the 21st century" is the view that the Mass is simply a communal celebration and the priest is simply the person chosen by "the community" to preside, with no special sacramental powers or apostolic succession. In November 2012, at a meeting attended by over 300 people, the objectives of the Association of Catholics in Ireland were formally approved. In 2019 Michael Kelly, editor of The Irish Catholic disputed the suggestion by the ACP that ordinating married men and women would reverse the decline in vocations for the priesthood, citing the steep decline in membership and vocations in the Church of England and mainstream Protestant denominations in Northern Europe, all of which ordain married men and women. The Association of Catholic Priests is trying to organise an "Assembly of the Irish Church" in a Dublin venue on 1 May of next year, and to recruit sympathetic laity and clerics to take part.

Its objective is to promote the formation and support of priestly spirituality and Catholic evangelism. Gaza This October Monday, October 16th 2023 Hour by hourcountlessmunitions fallin an exchangeof fearsome fire.In 2022 the results of the National Synthesis Document were sent to the Vatican, which confirmed that the majority of Irish Catholics wanted major change in areas including lay participation, the Church's attitude to women and the removal of mandatory celibacy for priests. How sad then that it has always been a hallmark of Modernism to seek to obliterate the distinction of roles among the various members of the Body of Christ! I would like to share below a recent leader article, "Time to move closer", from the Tablet -- I am sure Brendan would not mind us sharing it as we are told it is already shared with the Church Times.

n) A proposal has been put forward by some to convene an ecumenical Synod on common mission in the contemporary world. We are and we wish to remain”, the statement added, “at the very heart of the Church, committed to putting into place the reforms of the Second Vatican Council”. The celebration of the lives of the saints encourages us to move towards becoming the people God created us to be, that we might set the world on fire, as Catherine of Sienna put it.

A core recommendation was that the ACP should to identify a paid staff person to do its day-to- day work and drive its agenda forward with accountability to a leadership team and a wider advisory group. This is due in part to the association adopting a neutral position in the 2015 referendum which would allow same sex couples to have civil marriages, and in the 2018 abortion referendum where they asked parishses to stop allowing referendum campaigners to use the pulpit during Mass.

This intervention’, they say, ‘is unfair, unwarranted and unwise’ because, contrary to the claims of ‘some reactionary fringe groups’, the ACP is not ‘a small coterie of radical priests with a radical agenda’. One could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that he was trying to encourage the creation of an Irish Catholic Church, as distinct from the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. As Roman Catholics begin to explore, belatedly, the concept of synodality, they might be puzzled to see that a system designed to guard against autocracy seems to encourage open dissent in a way that the utterances of a single leader do not. Father Flannery, it may be remembered, came out in support of the Taioseach, Enda Kenny, when he scurrilously attacked the Pope last year: “I was happy with the Taoiseach’s statement”, he said; “Many of us priests are frustrated with the way the Vatican conducts its business.The discussion then branched into other areas, the exclusion of those who have divorced from any type of church service for a second union was mentioned as another way in which we are failing people and excluding them. It is through Christ’s grace that we count ourselves members – let alone sharing priesthood – in His church.